Between Fog and Snow

Lluvia: Buenos Aires to El Bolson

Bell and latch, El Bolson

Walk through mist, El Bolson

Frosty waters, El Bolson

With the lluvia of Argentina on my mind, I walked out of class into the tickling mist of Berkeley rain. As I went down the hill, I watched the rain water collect in the gutters on the side of the street and rush past.

Rain seems to be a blurry thing, creeping in with the fog, hardening into hail, then softening to snow again. The time I spent in Argentina was during the late hours of autumn and the beginnings of early winter. It never rained while I was there, rather the weather changed disguises from cold nights in the city to heavy cloaks of fog in the countryside to snow on the mountaintops. Looking back at my photographs, I was overcome with the power of rain, the rain that never came, yet loomed in the clouds and the frost and turned to snow. This promise of rain, or of weather, had a weight, which I felt differently in the city and the country.

As I put this work together, I had this weight in mind, the ability of rain to allow for a pause, whether that means a retreat from the usual sidewalk traffic, or a meditation about the transformation of a barren plain into a city, or of water freezing into snow.